Backstrom: Mirror Image
by TnJAGAz
Summary: Detective Sergeant Nicole Gravely, the straitlaced by-the-book officer in Portland's Special Crime Unit, is recovering from a night she'd rather forget when she takes a look in the mirror and sees her worst nightmare.


Backstrom – Mirror Image

Author: TnJAGAz – also a Backstrom Fan!

Rating: PG

Classification: Character relationships

Spoilers: None that I can think of…yet

Summary: Detective Sergeant Nicole Gravely, the straitlaced by-the-book officer in Portland's Special Crime Unit is recovering from a night she'd rather forget when she takes a look in the mirror and sees her worst nightmare.

The characters in this piece are the property of Fox Television, Hart Hanson, Far Field Productions, SoulPancake Productions and Fox Television Entertainment – this story is for non-profit entertainment of Backstrom fans only. No copyright infringement is intended or implied.

x*x*x*x*x

Ugh… the side of her head felt as if someone was whacking it with a large mallet.

A thoroughly disheveled, partially dressed Detective Sergeant Nicole Gravely pulled her face away from a spreading wet patch caused by the drool that had escaped her open mouth during the night.

She started to get up but quickly realized she was sleeping at the wrong end of the bed and narrowly avoided dumping herself unceremoniously onto her bedroom floor.

"God, what a night…" she moaned as she rolled over and tried to sit up.

A wave of pain coursed through her head which was exacerbated when she opened her eyes. Her bedroom seemed to be flooded with light.

"Oh Lord," she mumbled as she fell back down on the bed. She put a hand up to her strawberry blond hair and pulled the usually carefully coifed strands away from her face and mouth.

"Okay, let's try this one more time," she said groggily to herself and slowly sat up on the bed.

"That's one small victory," she announced to her room. "Now let's see if we can get off the bed."

Willing her wobbly legs over the side of her mattress, she levered herself again this time into a sitting position allowing the spinning room to catch up with her.

"Thank God it's Saturday," she mumbled. Then her eyes flew wide open. It was Saturday, wasn't it? Her panicked eyes flicked over to the calendar on the wall. _Yes, thank God, it was._

She breathed a deep sigh of relief.

"Okay, now let's try standing." That was a mistake. The moment she got herself upright, she felt a rumble deep in her stomach and that had her stumbling toward her bathroom.

**x*x*x*x*x*x**

After spending thirty minutes prostrate before the porcelain goddess, she evacuated the last of those pizza slices she had been eating along with her Willamette Valley Vineyards White Riesling last night.

_Note to self: Don't do that again… _ She thought wearily as she trudged out of her bathroom absently swiping at her mouth.

As she walked over toward her bed, she thought about how she ended up in this state. Of course, it had to do with her boss, the Anti-Christ, Everett Backstrom.

The day had started on an ominous note. That should have told her something. When she had started to take a shower that morning and turned on her water faucet, she was greeted by a deep throaty grumble from her pipes, followed by a smelly viscous fluid burbling up from the drain.

This was repeated by every drain in the apartment building. She immediately grabbed a damp washcloth and gave herself a quick sponge bath. The teeth would have to wait until she got to work. She chugged a generous portion of mouth wash and spit it into the toilet which seemed to have the only clean water in the apartment. After digging out a fresh pantsuit from her closet, she got on her cell and called her super. Turned out she was the eighth person in the building to report the undead water that was filling the bottom of her bathtub. He told her it would take him at least until noon, maybe longer, to get the problem resolved.

Once she got to work, however, things seemed normal enough. It was a Friday, end of the week, she didn't have weekend duty for a change. They had even cleared all their outstanding cases. So things were looking pretty good. Maybe she'd even take Nadia up on her dare to do jello shots at the local dive down the street. She promised herself, though, she wouldn't get drunk this time.

Then while putting the finishing touches on Niedermayer's forensic report, her computer screen wobbled and then the almost completed report vanished from her screen. Her heart sank as she thought about the little 0s and 1s that made up Niedermayer's report flying apart and fading into oblivion. He might have a backup of the report on his computer, but all of her prose was gone with her dead machine. A call to the IT Department got her a new workstation within a couple of hours, but her finalized version of Niedermayer's report, along with her Special Crimes Unit monthly reports, were gone with the electronic wind. She would have to start all over again on those…maybe on Monday.

Then he did it. Backstrom came in the office on a tear. He was swearing like a drunken sailor as he roared through the S.C.U. bullpen and made a beeline for his office.

Like an idiot she went in to see what had set him off this time. She found him tossing papers and folders left and right like he was on a scavenger hunt.

"Where is it?!" he roared as shoved another stack of files off his desk to join the untidy heap already on the floor.

"Where's what?" she remembered innocently asking. Boy, did she pay for that.

He gave her a savage look. "The file on the Adrian Carr!" he bellowed.

She remembered initially being flummoxed by his response. "Why?"

"Where's What? Why?" he said mockingly. "Don't give me that crap! Where's the file?!"

"I sent it down to Archives and Records. We didn't need it anymore. It wasn't an active case," she remembered explaining calmly to this madman.

'_It wasn't an active case.' _ Maybe they could put that on her gravestone. 'Here lies Detective Sergeant Nicole Gravely, Bureau of Portland Police Department, Special Crimes Unit. She stupidly said "It wasn't an active case."'

Oh hell.

"Maybe it wasn't an active case to you, BUT IT WAS TO ME! he roared. "GO GET IT!"

He stabbed his finger past her, pointing toward the elevators that would lead her to Archives and Records.

Suddenly she felt like club footed rookie just out of the academy.

"Well?! Don't just stand there like a frightened deer! GO GET IT! NOW!"

She hurriedly left the room, not daring to look at anyone as she hurried toward the elevators. She didn't want to see their faces. Not right now.

It took a full two hours in Archives and Records to find the file, thanks to their bureaucratic red tape and arcane filing system. And that didn't include promising Creepy Eddie, the records tech, a coffee in the break room, on her, for him helping to locate it.

She couldn't look at anyone when she finally made it back the S.C.U. bullpen. They all had looks of sympathy on their faces. Especially Big John Almond and Nadia. At first she just wanted to crawl into a hole and disappear.

No, she wasn't going to be that way. She wasn't going to timidly walk up to his door and tap weakly on his doorjamb like some weak pathetic recruit. How dare him treat her that way.

Halfway through the room she began striding toward his office and when she got there, she rapped sharply on his doorjamb.

"The Adrian Carr file," she remembered announcing. She was quite proud of herself for her spur of the moment emotional makeover.

His room was thick with cigar smoke. It would take a high powered fan and a dozen air fresheners to get rid of that. Out of the murky gloom he reached out and snatched the file from her hands and then walked back to his desk.

"You know you can't smoke in here," she reminded him.

He had the file open and was scanning the contents like he was looking at buried treasure. "I'll open the window," he said snidely as he sat down in his desk chair.

Moto brought a big portable fan to the doorway. "This will help get the smoke out when you're ready to open that window."

Backstrom gave the big officer a sarcastic smile. "Thank you, Moto." His smile faded when he looked back at her. "Leave the files on my desk alone. I'll give you any I want sent to Archives and Records, got it?"

She didn't give him the satisfaction of a reply. Thank God the day was almost over. Any plans to do jello shots with Nadia had gone out the window. She just wanted to go home and forget this day. Not to mention her upcoming date with Creepy Eddie.

She didn't remember much about the drive home. She stopped to pick up a large pizza bianco, with mozzarella, Mornay sauce, prosciutto, and roasted artichoke hearts. She also asked for fennel sausage and onions on it. Those last two ingredients probably weren't the best idea, but she just wanted to pig out and forget about today. It didn't help that she decided to wash it down with a nice white wine. She decided on that Willamette Valley Vineyards Riesling that was given to her by her dad.

**x*x*x*x*x**

Ugh, she could still taste those onions. They seemed even worse than they did going down when she was scarfing down pieces of pizza while chugging generous amounts of Riesling. Nicole looked around her usually neat bedroom. It looked like a hurricane had hit it. Clothes were scattered everywhere like a dryer had exploded-not to mention the outfit she had partially stripped off in a drunken stupor. She must've tossed her laundry basket full of clean clothes off the bed last night.

She sat down on the edge of her bed, careful not to sit in the drool pool on the other side.

How did she go from being rising star in the Vice Squad to flunky for Everett Backstrom in the S.C.U.? He said it was because she had slept with johns. Oh, if he only knew the truth.

That's when she caught sight of it.

In her mirror across the room, she saw her worst nightmare. A disheveled frumpy looking slob, hair sticking out like some tired Medusa wearing a half put on nightie and a pizza stained bathrobe.

All that was missing was the beard stubble and a cigar.

Oh God.

Immediately she stripped off the robe, straightened her nightie and pawed at her wild hairdo.

No, no, no! She was not going to end up like him!

She stumbled over to her dresser and found her hairbrush and began combing out her mess of hair. After pulling through a few nasty tangles which flared her pounding headache, she got her hair under control. She then turned and headed to the bathroom.

For moment she started to cry, remembering the evil smelling water that was occupying the bottom of her bathtub when she left for work yesterday morning. Girding herself, she turned on the light and cautiously pulled the shower door open. The black goo was gone and tub looked like it had just been scrubbed. Not believing her luck, she peeked at the sink. It was clean too. God bless her super.

Next she took a long, long steamy shower. It cleared her head a little, but left her tiny bathroom looking like Portland during a heavy fog alert. It took ten minutes to get the bathroom mirror so she could see herself. At least the Medusa was gone when she finally was able to see her image. And the puffiness under her eyes had faded some too.

Opening her medicine cabinet, she found her nausea medicine, downed a generous portion, and waited for it to sooth her roiling stomach. When the war in her belly had quieted, she swallowed two pain relievers and gently sipped a cup of cool water. When she didn't retch the pills back up, she carefully walked out to her recliner and moving the empty pizza box to the floor beside her chair she lay down in the comfy overstuffed thing and closed her eyes.

Within a couple of hours the mallet of pain assaulting her head dulled and then disappeared making her feel slightly dopey. She looked at the clock on the mantle above her television. It was 1:30 in the afternoon. So much for an early morning run. Maybe tomorrow.

**x*x*x*x*x**

Monday morning was uneventful. No evil water in her tub or sink. She took a normal shower and brushed her teeth. When she left the house even the normally overcast and rainy Portland weather was partly cloudy.

Arriving at work, she found that IT had been able to do a partial recovery of her files, including Neidermayer's forensic report. Instead of having to spend the whole week recreating the S.C.U. monthly reports, she'd have to spend only half a week doing this. That was a victory of some sort.

She apologized to Nadia for blowing off their girls' night out on Friday. Nadia told her not to worry about it, and said she knew Friday had been rough for her and she completely understood.

But before they left the break room, Nadia warned her she wouldn't get off so easily next weekend.

All in all, not bad for a Monday morning.

But the biggest surprise came later in the afternoon. After getting off the phone with Sergeant Lovejoy in Homicide, Gravely was feeling pretty good. She had gotten them to tentatively agree to a joint investigation with S.C.U. on the Tiffany DeBrune murder. Lovejoy reluctantly admitted they were stumped and they could use Everett Backstrom's help.

As she hung up she felt a presence behind her. Turning around she saw her boss standing there looking somewhat sheepish. Backstrom turned his head toward John Almond who silently told him to proceed.

Backstrom turned back to her sighing heavily like he wished he was anywhere else. He looked down at Gravely and began speaking in a low and strained voice. Like he disagreed with every word he was saying. "It was…pointed out to me, by Detective Almond, that I was…rude and unprofessional...to you…and so for that…I apologize."

Oh my God.

Had the world just come to an end?

At this point Detective Sergeant Gravely could have done one of several things. She could have said "I'm sorry, could you repeat that, please?" She could have shot out of her chair and said "Ha! Damn right you're sorry! You should be! I had a thoroughly crappy weekend thanks to you!" But she chose not to make him suffer anymore. After all, sweet John had guilted him into doing this. That was punishment enough. She could tell that this was killing her boss. And the agony wasn't done yet.

"I will, from now on…have a…special bin…on my desk, for files…that I don't want you to send to Archives and Records."

She looked up at him. "Thank you." One professional to another. No gloating. No smiling. No hint of a victory dance.

That seemed to satisfy Everett Backstrom. "Don't get used to it," he snorted and then turned around and went back into his office.

She knew what he meant. The apology. True, they were as rare as hen's teeth. Maybe that's why she didn't prolong his agony. She got an apology. And that made this week look a whole lot better than last Friday.

-FINIS


End file.
